Shasa
Slipping quietly into the scenery after accomplishing her goal, Shasa has made a reputation for herself as an expert at stealth, with her assassination skills taking a more minor role in proceedings. Look beyond the veil of Shasa's Rogue skillset, though, and you'll see a quite unusual young night elf, one who'd fit more into the archetype of a rogue than that of a Kaldorei, but with just enough morals to avoid having been blacklisted by the Alliance (at least for the moment) and with a few quirks that make her a bit difficult to deal with. Fortunately for most of the world, where Shasa's skills are needed, she's usually able and willing to help…pray to Elune that someone is helping the rest of the world, because Shasa's definitely not. Physical Description Shasa has a couple of notable visual traits. For one, she stands slightly smaller and narrower than the average night elf, giving her a somewhat better build for sneaking around. For another, Shasa's skin is unusually pale, nearly white, making Shasa's face the only part of her that she can never change to blend in with her environment. This may be part of why her gear and even hair color are often modified to blend in with the environment, as Shasa highly values stealth and feels the need to camouflage herself as much as possible, yet has this one trait that keeps her from ever doing so. Personality Shasa's personality is prone to changing wildly in each new part of the world that she visits, often meshing with the atmosphere of the zone, but sometimes being in stark contrast to the zone. However, a few traits are usually (if not always) consistent within Shasa's fluctuating personality: a certain minimum level of altruism (a low one, but an existent one nonetheless); a reasonably high regard for stealth; and a tendency towards irrational, unshakable fear when in the vicinity of various threats (usually one or both of demonic magic and fire, although she can often avoid being bothered by the latter). These first two traits are why she helps fix the world's problems, while the third…tends to be why she doesn't fix the world's problems, letting some of the most dire threats remain untouched by her hand. Worse, Shasa doesn't know that this is a problem that needs to be fixed, simply accepting that this is a part of her that needs to be worked around. Perhaps, some day, she'll realize that she needs to fix this problem, but until someone else finds this out and helps her to resolve this issue, it'll likely never stop. Strengths Shasa's main strengths revolve around excelling as a Subtlety rogue. While some rogues are content to simply use the Shadow to hide themselves from view, Shasa takes this one step further, constantly changing her gear's appearance to try to make herself blend in with her environment. Shasa also excels in other areas within the Rogue skillset, such as quickly killing, incapacitating, or looting targets. Additionally, Shasa has some skill with trading and verbal deception, although she rarely uses these. Weaknesses Shasa's two main weaknesses are her fragility and her tendency towards irrational fear. The former comes from being oriented around stealth and wearing light armor in the pursuit of stealth, as well as having a small frame. The latter is somewhat more complicated—as its link to her past is tentative and deeply hidden—but is still a nearly unshakable part of her personality, having caused her large amounts of trouble in the past, including having seriously threatened her career multiple times. Background Note: Kaldorei lifespans detailed herein are based on this Kaldorei lifespan estimation. In the year -288 (year 204 by the King's Calendar), Shasa was born in Astranaar, the key night elf town in the forest of Ashenvale upon the slopes of Mount Hyjal. However, when she was about 20 years old (still a small child by Kaldorei standards), her family moved from Astranaar to Auberdine to assist the underpopulated and struggling town. Growing up in Auberdine was what engrained in Shasa her sense of altruism and necessity for vigilance (the latter of which would foster her high regard for stealth), as these virtues were required to help Auberdine to its fullest and avoid having trouble while there. When Shasa was closer to 150—old enough that she might have been able to move out on her own, but was still well within her rights to stay with her parents—Shasa's family fell on hard times when her father, the family's main supporter, died trying to stop a local fire. As such, Shasa's mother, a slightly skilled trader, decided that it would be best for her and Shasa to move to the newly founded trade center of Everlook in Winterspring, located on the opposite side of Mount Hyjal's slopes. It was here that Shasa started to learn the ways of the rogue, as she found it helpful to use stealth, thievery, and other, similar methods to help support herself and her mother. However, while this increased her vigilance, this degraded her altruism, leading her close to her current personality; additionally, her lifestyle taught her that she needed to be adaptive in her traits in order to maintain a living, thus causing her ever-fluctuating personality. When the Cataclysm struck the world, Shasa realized that she needed to re-focus. Now indisputably a full adult of 327 and capable of doing whatever she wanted, Shasa started adventuring within Northern Kalimdor, trying to hone her skills in an attempt to protect it as much as she could. Initially, this protection was only applied towards the Kaldorei, but as she did more and more protection and adventuring, she started to realize both that she couldn't always protect the Kaldorei lands and that the Alliance—which she now had a significant amount of loyalty to—sometimes needed her elsewhere. This caused Shasa to start traveling the world, trying to protect whatever areas she discerned to be most in need (often inaccurately), which was then the cause of her budding reputation as a formidable rogue and soldier of the Alliance. Trivia *In real life, Shasa was named after the Bionicle character of the same name. Aside from sharing a name, the two characters are not intended to bear any resemblance to each other. Category:Characters